Plato is attributed to saying, "the beginning of something is always important, especially when it is young and needs time to grow."

A new year!!  Adults often view the New Year as an opportunity to start a fresh; take a breath and begin with renewed vigor; resolutions, ideas, strategies, careers, studies, hopes, plans, family, work, relationships.  For Children the New Year is a timeless intangible concept - time is some bizarre thing that adults get hysterical about but is completely nonsensical to young children.  Children mark the passing of time with events at the time of occurrence.  Too often our children get caught up with the adult world - the treadmill of life; the fast pace; highly structured, finely tuned time line driven life. 

So as we begin the year let us all take a moment to acknowledge and endorse that children need the opportunity to enjoy, relish and live a childhood - that they are at the beginning of their journey, that they need time to grow, they need time just to be, to ponder, to explore, to play and to rest.  The next step should be a resolution of action .... action to deliver a childhood to our children.   

While we are on the resolution theme - we could use this time to think and then act in some way to help those who are less fortunate than each of us.  There are so many great and wonderful experiences and opportunities so many young children in Australia will have this year. In many ways we celebrate and appreciate how wonderful our country is and how lucky we are as citizens with the provision and access to health, education and support for many families.  Whilst this is the case for the majority of Australians there are many Australian children who do not share or enjoy the same opportunities. 

Our voluntary and community work around Australia across a broad range of communities provides regular evidence that many Australian children are not lucky; do not have the support they need and do not have access to health, education and social connectedness that is so important for us all.  Our work with indigenous communities in the top end, our work with refugee children, our work in communities where access to state of the art technologies, equipment and resources resemble more a third world country than our own are still sadly a part of the Australian experience.

Here at Early Life Foundations we often comment on the disturbing trend of the erroneous approach of using simple and misleading tables of results and rankings of schools on a website to measure the quality of a school or the quality of an education. These measures are so far removed from the realities of daily life and experience for so many children, families and communities.

As researchers ourselves we are mindful of how misleading and misconstrued data can be in an attempt to measure aspects of humanness, aspects of quality and the journey itself.

The mission of our organization is to promote a sense of a child centered world and community. One which supports families and educators and a range of organizations committed to the care and education and well being of young children.

As 2011 commences, we encourage all parents and educators to consider deeply the essence of meaningful education, well being and happiness.  We often say, it is the quality and nature of the journey and process itself which in the longer term has more impact and importance on a life than simply the actual result in the short term.  New Year resolutions rarely result in long term change because the resolution does not have the platform of commitment and the plan of action.  We encourage and challenge parents to not only consider deeply but to think about, map out and make a commitment to how you are going to make a change - for your children and others children.  Often we see ourselves as individuals not being able to make a mark or a difference at the community level.  We can take strength from Nelson Mandela; as President Barack Obama writes in the forward to Mandela's new book "conversations with myself":

Through his choices, Mandela made it clear that we did not have to accept the world as it is - that we could do our part to seek the world as it should be"

We are committed as an organization to do our part in seeking the world as it should be for children by supporting educators, parents and children both in effective parenting and through our work with pre-schools and schools in personalized learning.

We will continue to be an independent voice that is not limited by or influenced by Government spin, politics or influence.

Here are just some of the issues we are committed to during 2011 which we encourage participation in and comment on for anyone interested.

• Continuing our work in Arnhem land in education for indigenous children in the primary years
• Building upon and increasing our parent outreach and support and community presentations and consultations
• Continuing our commitment to giving children the opportunity to engage and be immersed in an education that is real, relevant and meaningful to them as individuals. An education that inspires children to learn and to want to learn.
• To teach teachers in Australia and Internationally how to deliver authentic personalized learning in schools across Prep-grade 8 through the Walker Learning Approach
• Advocating for authentic assessment and reporting in education
• Advocating for children's rights and well being, particularly in areas of emotional , social and intellectual development
• Continuing to work with other organizations committed to supporting children and families
• Other additions include some new staff, newsletters, opportunities to become a member of Early Life Foundations and our new Face book site coming soon!!!

We look forward to another year of wonderful opportunities to speak with, work with and support parents, educators and children.  That we continue our action plan on our perpetual New Year resolutions!!!

"Promote a child focused world" and

"Support others less fortunate than ourselves."

We look forward to the journey with you and look forward to your communication with us about any ideas, events or exchanges you would like to share or publicize - go to our website for the contact us, the blog and soon face book and twitter.

Kathy Walker and Shona Bass